Should we extend access to medically assisted procreation (MAP) to all women, without distinction? On this highly controversial question, the High Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCEfh) has ruled: it is clearly in favor. Two years after the adoption of the law on marriage for all, the HCEfh believes that it is time to extend assisted reproduction to all women “without discrimination”, heterosexual as well as homosexual.
The subject still remains taboo in France while the issue is settled in other European countries, underlines the authority. This “inconsistency of French law” no longer needs to be considered by the HCEfh. None of the European countries that have legalized the marriage of same-sex couples prohibits assisted reproduction for female couples, notes the High Council, quoted by AFP. The UK, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden also allow it for single women, and the same is true in Canada, South Africa and Argentina.
PMA (or medically assisted procreation AMP) is governed by the law of 6 August 2004 on bioethics. It stipulates that medically assisted procreation is intended to meet the parental demand of a couple. It aims to “remedy infertility whose pathological character has been medically diagnosed or to prevent transmission to the child or to a member of the couple of a disease of particular gravity”. It is reserved for heterosexual couples and excludes single people and homosexual couples.
A joint advance declaration of parentage
PMA has enabled the birth of 23,887 childrenin France (2012 figure). Currently, female couples who wish to benefit from it are forced to practice illegal assisted reproduction abroad (in Belgium and Spain in particular), at an often exorbitant cost (around 10,000 euros on average).
The current law must therefore be changed and adapt to “the reality of families and practices” judges the High Council. “Opening up assisted reproduction to all women would take a further step towards equal rights.”
He also advocates the establishment of an “anticipated joint declaration of filiation” to prevent a woman who has not given birth from having to marry and adopt the child. The HCEfh also asks that the PMA for the couples of women benefit from the same reimbursement by the Social Security.
>> To read also: PMA: boost your chance to have a baby
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